Lord Prestimion

  How long had they been in here, actually? Weeks? Months? One day flowed unaccountably into the next. It seemed like centuries since they had entered this monstrous place.

  Three times, now, scouts had gone forward and returned with reports of having found the Procurator’s camp. A lively, bustling place, hundreds of men, tents, floaters and mounts, stockpiles of provisions—but everything vanished like a phantom in the night when they brought the army forward and made ready for an attack. Was what the scouts had found merely an illusion? Or was it the absence of the camp, when they went back for a second look, that was the illusion?

  Whatever it was, Septach Melayn was sure, sorcery had to be at work. The abracadabra of the mages operating on their minds, some devilish conjuration. Dantirya Sambail was playing with them. And doubtless getting things ready, all the while, for the long-planned stroke of violence by which he meant to take his revenge on Prestimion for having thwarted his hunger for power in so many ways.

  Another of the scaly little creatures of the river was staring at him, perhaps a dozen feet away. It stood half erect, weaving a busy pattern in the air with its multitude of little legs.

  “Are you one of the Procurator’s spies?” Septach Melayn asked it. “Well, tell him Septach Melayn sends him this gift!”

  Once again he tossed a rock, aiming this time to hit. But somehow the little thing succeeded in dodging the missile, deftly moving just a few inches to one side. It continued to peer at him as though defying him to try again.

  “Nicely done,” he said. “There aren’t many who sidestep the thrusts of Septach Melayn!”

  He let the small creature be. Sudden drowsiness was coming over him, though it was only the twilight hour. For a moment or two he fought it, fearing that the creatures of the river would swarm up over him as he slept; and then he recognized the telltale signs of a sending from the Lady, and let the spell take possession of him.

  The dream-state came over him within instants, there by the shore of the gravelly river. No longer was he in vile Stoienzar, but rather in some green and leafy glade of Lord Havilbove’s wonderful park on the slopes of Castle Mount, and the Lady of the Isle was with him, Prestimion’s mother, the beautiful Princess Therissa, telling him to fear nothing, to move ahead and strike boldly.

  To which he replied, “Fear is not the issue, milady. But how can I strike at something I can’t see?”

  “We will help you to see,” she told him. “We will show you the face of the enemy. And then, Septach Melayn, it will be your time to act.”

  That was all. The moment passed. The Lady was gone. Septach Melayn opened his eyes, blinked, realized that he had been dreaming.

  Before him stood half a dozen of the little scaly things of the river. They had clambered up out of the gravel and were arrayed in a semicircle before him, no more than ten inches from the tips of his boots, standing in that odd semi-erect posture of theirs. He watched them weaving their forelegs about, in much the same way as the first one had. It was almost as though they were entangling him in some spell. Do we have a conclave of tiny sorcerers here? he wondered. Were they planning a concerted assault? Did they mean to rush forward in another moment and sink their little nippers into his flesh?

  Apparently not. They were just sitting there, watching him. Fascinated, perhaps, by the sight of a long-legged human being dozing on a boulder. He did not feel himself in any danger. The sight of them, arranged as they were in an earnest little congregation, seemed amusing and nothing more.

  So far as he could recall, these were the first inhabitants of the Stoienzar he had encountered who did not seem inherently pernicious.

  A good omen, he thought. Perhaps things will be changing for the better, now.

  Perhaps.

  14

  “Now,” Prestimion said. “If you’re ready, let it begin!”

  They were gathered about him, the four of them, in the room that he had made his battle headquarters at the royal suite of Stoien city’s Crystal Pavilion: Dinitak, Dekkeret, Maundigand-Klimd, and the Lady of the Isle. It was just before dawn. They had been preparing for this moment with the most single-minded concentration for the past ten days.

  Dinitak wore the dream-helmet. He would spearhead the attack. The Lady, using the silver circlet of her power, would monitor all aspects of the struggle as it developed and report on them to Prestimion.

  “Yes, my lord, I’m ready,” young Barjazid said, giving Prestimion an impudent wink.

  The boy closed his eyes. Adjusted something on the rim of the helmet. Hurled his mind upward and outward toward the camp of Dantirya Sambail.

  An eternally long moment crawled by. Then Dinitak’s left cheek quivered and he drew the side of his mouth back sharply in an ugly grimace; he lifted his left hand and spread its fingers wide, and they began to tremble like leaves fluttering in a hard wind.

  “He is focusing the energy of the helmet against his father,” Princess Therissa murmured. “Locating him. Making contact.”

  The boy was trembling. Trembling. Trembling. Trembling.

  Dekkeret turned to Maundigand-Klimd. “Are we right to do this?” he asked in a low voice. “I know what the father is like. He’ll kill the boy if he can.”

  “Be calm. The Lady will protect him,” the Su-Suheris replied.

  “Do you really think she—”

  Angrily Prestimion waved them both to silence. To his mother he said, “Are you in contact with Septach Melayn also?”

  She answered with a nod.

  “Where is he? How far from Dantirya Sambail?”

  “Very, very close. But he’s unaware that he is. The cloud of unknowingness still screens the Procurator’s camp.”

  From Dinitak Barjazid came now a sharp grunting sound, almost a yelp. He did not appear to be aware that he had uttered it. His eyes were still shut; both his hands were fiercely clenched into tight fists; convulsive tremors now ran up and down both sides of his face, so that his features were twisted and distorted into constantly changing patterns of disarray.

  “He has made contact with his father,” the Princess Therissa said. “Their minds are touching.”

  “And? And?”

  But the Lady’s eyes were closed now, too.

  Prestimion waited. It was maddening to be fighting a battle by proxy like this, across a distance of—what?—two thousand miles, was it? He chafed at his own inactivity. Somewhere out there was Dantirya Sambail, with the helmeted Venghenar Barjazid at his side. Somewhere not far to the east of the Procurator’s camp were Septach Melayn, Gialaurys, Navigorn, and the army that had followed them through the Stoienzar. A second army, a regiment of Pontifical forces led by an officer named Guyan Daood, was closing in from the other side. Meanwhile the Coronal Lord of Majipoor stood idly by in this luxurious room far from the scene of battle, a mere observer, depending on an untried and virtually unknown boy from Suvrael to open the way for his armies and on his own mother to tell him what was going on.

  “The father knows he is under attack,” the Lady said, speaking as though in trance. “But he has not yet discovered its source. When he does—ah—ah—”

  She pointed a stabbing finger across the room. Prestimion saw Dinitak go jerking backward as though a hot blade had touched his flesh. He staggered, lurched, nearly fell. Dekkeret, moving swiftly toward him, caught him and steadied him. But the boy did not want to be steadied. Brushing Dekkeret aside as though he were a mere buzzing fly, he planted his feet far apart, threw his head and shoulders back, let his arms dangle at his sides. His whole body was trembling. His hands coiled and uncoiled, now forming fists, now spreading wide with the fingers rigid.

  A new sound came from Dinitak’s lips, stranger than before. It was harsh and low, a bestial throbbing sound, not quite a growl, not quite a whine. It seemed to Prestimion that he had heard a sound like that before, but where? When? Then he remembered: it was the krokkotas, the caged man-killing beast of the midnight market of Bombifale, all jaws and teeth and claws, that had
uttered the same hideous droning noise. And later it had come from Dantirya Sambail as well, that day in the Sangamor tunnels, the krokkotas growl again, a frightful cry of throttled rage and hatred and threat.

  And now it was coming from Dinitak. “The father speaks through the boy’s throat,” whispered the Lady. “Crying out his rage at this betrayal.”

  Prestimion saw Dekkeret’s face go pale with fear. He knew at once what the young man must be thinking: that Venghenar Barjazid must surely have the upper hand in this encounter, that his superior skill with the thought device, his wily unscrupulous nature, his savage determination to prevail, would inevitably prove to be too much for Dinitak. They might well see the boy destroyed before their eyes.

  But Dinitak had told them over and over that he was confident of success; and in any case they had no choice but to go forward now. This was the path they had chosen; no other was available to them.

  And Dinitak Barjazid appeared to be withstanding his father’s counterthrusts.

  That terrifying growling had ceased. So had much of the trembling. Dinitak stood firmly braced as before, deep in his trance, nostrils flaring, eyes open now but unseeing, his teeth bared and his jaws agape. His whole aspect was a strange one, but strangely calm as well. It was as though he had passed through a zone of terrible storms into some unknown tranquil realm beyond.

  Prestimion leaned forward eagerly. “Tell me what’s happening, mother!”

  “Yes. Yes.” She seemed very far away herself. Her words came with great difficulty. “They are—contending for power. Neither one—is able to budge—the other. It is—a stalemate—a stalemate, Prestimion—”

  “If only I could help, somehow—”

  “No. No need. He is holding his father at bay—preventing him—preventing him from—”

  “From what, mother?”

  “From sustaining—sustaining—”

  Prestimion waited.

  “Yes?” he said, when he could wait no longer.

  “From sustaining the cloud of unknowingness,” said the Princess Therissa. For a moment she returned from her trance and her eyes focused squarely on Prestimion’s. “The father is unable to do both things at the same time, to fend off his son’s attack and also to keep the cloud of unknowingness in place around the Procurator’s camp. And so the cloud is lifting. The way is clear for Septach Melayn.”

  This part of the jungle seemed just like all the rest, a habitation for monsters. Heat. Humidity. Sandy, moist, marshy soil. Thickets of manganoza palms everywhere. Strange plants, strange birds overhead, strange little animals peering hungrily at them from the underbrush, clouds of sinister little buzzing things in the air, the great unrelenting eye of the sun above them, seemingly filling half the sky. The ocean close at hand on their left and a solid wall of green on their right. The populous northern shore of the peninsula was somewhere off beyond those trees, a pleasant land of thriving harbors, bountiful farms, sumptuous resorts, bayfront villas; but one had no sense here that any of that existed. The north shore might as well have been on some other world.

  In this place plants and animals both were indefatigable foes. Nightmare things with teeth and claws lurked everywhere. And again and again it was necessary to leave the safety of the floaters, come forth with energy-throwers, blast away at the stubborn tangles of inimical sharp-edged greenery that blocked their path. And for what? For what? The pursuit of an invisible enemy who vanished before their advance with will-o’-the-wisp stealth?

  Today, though—today was going to be different. They had the Lady’s promise of that.

  “Can you feel her with you?” Gialaurys asked. He and Septach Melayn were riding in the lead floater today. Navigorn was just behind them.

  “I feel her, yes.”

  The sendings had been coming to him, waking and sleeping, for the past day and a half. It was an experience such as Septach Melayn had never before had in his life, or even imagined was possible: the constant presence of the Lady in some corner of his mind, speaking softly to him, often without the use of words, simply touching him, steadying him, comforting him, lending him her strength.

  She was with him now.

  Rise before dawn. Go forward unhesitatingly. You are within striking distance of your enemy.

  “What is she saying?” Gialaurys demanded. “Tell me, Septach Melayn! Tell me! I want to know!” He was like some big, eager, overfriendly tame beast, clambering all over him. “Are we really near him? Why can’t we see anything? The smoke of their campfires, for instance—”

  “Peace, Gialaurys,” Septach Melayn replied. One had to be patient with the great burly fellow: he meant well, his heart was good. “The cloud of unknowingness still hangs over everything in front of us.”

  “But if the Lady says it’s going to lift—”

  “Peace, Gialaurys. Please.”

  “I find you very strange today, Septach Melayn.”

  “I find myself very strange. I am not my own self at all. But let me be: let me hear the messages of the Lady undistracted by your chatter, eh?”

  “She speaks to you even now, while you’re awake?”

  “Please,” said Septach Melayn in a tone compounded of irritation and weariness and anger, and this time Gialaurys withdrew sulkily to his side of the cabin and said no more.

  It had been just after dawn when they set out, and now, an hour later, the sun was rapidly climbing in the sky. They seemed to be following a vaguely northwest course through the jungle, although always remaining within a few miles of the sea. It was the Lady, speaking through Septach Melayn from her place beside Prestimion at the western tip of the peninsula, who was directing their route.

  Some mysterious enterprise, Septach Melayn knew, was unfolding back there in Stoien city under Prestimion’s command and with the aid of the Lady. He had no idea what it was, only that they had found some way of striking at Dantirya Sambail from afar, and that very shortly they would lift the shroud of darkness which for weeks had kept him and his forces from striking at the foe they had come into this ghastly jungle to find.

  Was it so? Or was this all some sorry hallucination, born in his tired mind out of the long travail of their journey? How could he tell?

  What could he do but obey the guiding impulses that arose in his mind, and hope they were real ones? And struggle on and on until this business had reached its conclusion, if such a thing was ever to be granted them.

  This was not how he had expected things to be, this life of constant toil and frustration, when Prestimion first had been named as heir to the throne.

  How strange it all had been since then, Septach Melayn thought, looking back over the short and troubled years of the reign of the Coronal Lord Prestimion. “Lord Confalume has told me that I am to be the next Coronal,” Prestimion had said one day when they all were much younger than they were now, thousands of years younger; and they had rejoiced, he and Gialaurys and little Duke Svor, they had caroused far into the night, and Akbalik had come in eventually to help them finish the last of the wine, and Navigorn, and Mandrykarn, who would die in the war, and Abrigant and perhaps one of Prestimion’s other brothers, and even Korsibar—yes, Korsibar had been there, joyously embracing Prestimion with all the rest, for the crazy idea of seizing the throne for himself had not yet entered his mind. And the future had looked bright indeed for them that night. But then—the usurpation, and the civil war, and the memory obliteration, and this new business with Dantirya Sambail—why, the whole reign thus far had been nothing but sorrow and toil. What had it gained any of them that Prestimion was Coronal Lord, except a life of hardship and pain and weariness and sorrow for the loss of good friends?

  And now—now—this awful unending trek through the Stoienzar, pursuing a phantom that would not allow itself to be found—

  Septach Melayn shrugged. Like everything else, this was part of the plan of the Divine. Who someday would summon them all to return to the Source, as was the destiny of everyone who had ever lived, great and small
, and what difference would it make then that they had had to endure these little moments of discomfort in this jungle when they would much rather have been carousing at the Castle?

  Therefore, he thought, utter no complaints. Go on and on, wherever you must. Do your task, whatever it may be.

  He stared forward through the windscreen of the floater.

  “Gialaurys?” he said suddenly.

  “You told me that you wanted no conversation.”

  “That was before. Look you, Gialaurys! Look there!” Hastily bringing the floater to a halt, Septach Melayn pointed toward the north with a frantic jabbing finger.

  Gialaurys looked, rubbed his eyes, looked again. “A clearing? Tents?” he said, amazed.

  “A clearing, yes. Tents.”

  “Is Dantirya Sambail in there somewhere, do you think?”

  Septach Melayn nodded. They had stumbled onto the verge of an actual road, two floater-widths wide, that cut straight across the rough track that they had been following westward. It began to their north, amidst the manganoza thickets, and appeared to run down toward the sea. Through the opening that it made in the saw-palm grove they could see the tawny tents of a good-sized encampment in the midst of the jungle, the sort of hastily improvised bivouac that their scouts had come upon more than once, but which no one had ever been able to find again the next day.

  And there was the Lady’s sweet voice in his mind, letting him know that they had reached their goal and should make ready for attack.

  Leaving the floater, he trotted back to the one just behind theirs, Navigorn’s, which had halted also. Navigorn was peering out, looking puzzled.